Tonight, at Temple Isaiah, we celebrate Simchat Torah. The rituals of Simchat Torah revolve around the completion and the beginning again of the cycle of Torah readings. The completion is marked with circling and dancing in honor of the Torah. With joyous accompaniment by our own youth band, The Mighty Kleztones, we break out in joyous song and dancing. We form circles around those dancing with the Torah scrolls and the dancing goes on spontaneously, losing ourselves in the fervor of the moment.
In the recent past, Simchat Torah had become very much a holiday for children, perhaps because adults have some reservations about “letting loose” and expressing unbridled joy in public. I also think though that the relegation of the holiday to children may also reflect our attitude toward Torah. Often we might feel a more distant or ambivalent attitude than that of the generations before us. Yet, even with any hesitations, we should still be able to rejoice in the Torah (at least!) one day a year, just as we can rejoice at times in all the relationships in our lives despite our ambivalences about those relationships. Our tradition teaches that the Torah is “a tree of life to those who hold fast to (or grasp) it.” Holding the Torah and dancing with it can therefore become an essential kinesthetic experience for us.
Further, I believe that it is important from time to time to be more “childlike”, therefore losing one’s self and tapping into another part of our being through the dancing and singing and celebrating on Simchat Torah. The dancing calls upon us to throw ourselves completely into rejoicing with the Torah. Rabbi Michael Strassfeld writes that it is a time of dropping our defenses to express joy when for most of us letting go takes place only at times of tragedy. By expressing a fullness in relationship to the Torah on this night, we will more easilty be able to express pure love at other moments and in other relationships.
Please join us tonight as we celebrate Simchat Torah with dancing, with prayer, with community. Let yourself go and feel the power of the joy of Torah.
Shabbat Shalom,
Cantor Korn
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